The story

Wow, this thing is harder to keep up with than I realized. Its not that I haven't been doing anything, actually been keeping busy. But find myself neglecting to write all of this down. Anyway, let's back up a step.

I want to write my story in the format that would share it at an AA meeting. I think this might help me develop it and think of new things to say the next time I speak at a meeting. I don't want to walk in with a script, but 20 minutes to tell your whole story at a meeting sounds like a long time until it's 4:15 and you're still discussing your college drinking days.

My drinking story is actually pretty boring. I don't mean to say that I'm not an alcoholic. It's just that I've heard other people's stories and thought to myself "wow, I wasn't THAT bad."

I've realized that this thinking is incredibly dangerous to my recovery. Thinking "I wasn't that bad" can only lead to relapses, as I try to convince myself that I wasn't actually out of control and next time will be different.

So now when I think about my story, I say that it is full of "yets." As in, when I was drinking:

- I hadn't YET lost my closest friends and family

- I hadn't YET lost a job due to drinking (although I should have)

- I hadn't YET been arrested for anything related to drinking (DUI, etc)

- I hadn't YET gotten myself killed

Maybe these things wouldn't have happened. But let's look at the progression. As a year ago:

- I hadn't YET been evicted from an apartment - UNTIL my landlord told me my lease wouldn't be renewed

- I hadn't YET been beaten up during a blackout - UNTIL I came to in the wee hours of November 13, 2008 with a bloody, bruised face and no recollection of how it got that way

- I hadn't YET been confronted with an intervention - UNTIL my family and friends got together on November 15, 2008

So if these things ended up happening, who's to say the previous things wouldn't come to pass?The speed with which my disease progressed makes it likely that they not only would have occurred at some point...they were probably on the near horizon.

I never drank in high school. I mean, I had drinks at some point, I went to a couple of parties, I had Manhattans with my family on Christmas Eve. But I never "drank". I actually don't know how to clearly differentiate the two as I write this. Most everyone I know drinks...but I guess just alcoholics "drink"? Whatever, you get the idea.

When I got to college, I certainly took advantage of the opportunity to drink more freely and definitely did some stupid things. Really stupid things. I was always the last person at the bar. I always had more to drink than everyone else. And I rarely remembered getting home But even then, I mainly drank on the weekends. I wasn't going out 4-5 nights a week, wasn't getting a fake ID so I could go wherever I wanted. I knew I was a heavy drinker when I went out but I never thought anything past that.

After college, I think my drinking was similar (although, looking back, I'd be curious to ask my friends what they thought). Again, I wasn't drinking every day, I wasn't sitting home alone drinking. I went out on weekends...but I went out hard. Again, plenty of Saturday and Sunday mornings when I just didn't remember the night before. But I always made it to work on Monday.

B-School was a whole different story. I went drinking several nights a week. But it felt like everyone did. The # of times I drank didn't seem like a problem. But the volume each particular night was. Too many times I embarrassed myself at Thursday happy hour. Too many times I showed up at the library Friday afternoon to get asked by 5 different people "how were YOU feeling this morning?" (BTW, don't ever ask people this question, whether they have a drinking problem or not. If you have a reason to ask, then you pretty much know how they are feeling. And you probably aren't the only person to ask, so you're just pissing them off and making yourself look like a tool.)

Feel like there might be more to tell of the B-School years, but not for this post.

After B-School, I worked in investment banking for 4 years. I know there were plenty of stories to tell during this time, but all I can really recall are the 100-120 hour weeks. Didn't have time to drink.

Until Summer 2007. I had changed banks just 2 months before business started shutting down. No market for anything. So plenty of time to drink. 12 PM? Long lunch at an Irish pub. 3 PM? Few afternoon rounds - as long as nothing comes through on the blackberry, who cares? 7 PM? I'm going to be here all night anyway, why not run out for a few.

This went on for about 6 months until I got swallowed in layoffs. Believe it or not, it really wasn't due to my drinking. My annual review was excellent, I never had any issues with anybody, I was trusted, etc. Business was so slow that most people really never noticed (at least the people who mattered).

So in March 2008, I was laid off and it was off to the races. I could probably leave out the first 32 years of my life and just start here and I would still fill the whole 20 minutes. Will try to be more concise here. When I first lost my job, I thought it would be nice to just take a couple months and relax after 4 years of banking hours. So I started frequenting a pub near my apartment. I used to laugh to myself about the guys who were there every day, sitting in the same bar stool, drinking the same drinks. Until they started remembering my name when I came in and remembering what to pour for me.

After a couple months went by, I decided it was the summer and, since no one really hires in the summer (Rationalization!! Justification!!), let's just keep enjoying this little break and go back to the bar.

Come September, I really had just run out of reasons to not look for a job barring sheer momentum. It was so much easier to get up at noon, walk to the bar, sit there all day, come home and drink till I passed out before doing it all over again. That was more fun than updating my resume, calling headhunters, paying bills, cleaning my apartment, visiting friends, calling family, cooking dinner. It seemed more fun than ANYTHING I normally would have done. But that did not seem unusual AT ALL to me. I saw NOTHING wrong with it. Because to recognize something was wrong with it would have meant recognizing the need to change something. And somehow, change had become the scariest thing I could imagine. Changing my daily routine, as disgusting as it was, seemed like the most difficult thing I would ever have to do.

Now, in hindsight, the change that was needed was not to make me into a NEW person. The change needed was to make me into the OLD me. Somehow, alcoholism put this huge blinder up between me and my old life and made me a) forget what ind of a person I was and b) think it was impossible to be him again.

WTF?!

So in November, I had an intervention. If you've seen the show, it's just like that. Without the camera crew. The only difference in mine was that I knew in advance. Long story how I knew, but I found out 5 days in advance. the night I found out, I had about 30 minutes of intense shock and dismay, followed by extreme relief and serenity. I was completely ready to do whatever these people told me before we had even met.

But I wasn't going to just waste those 5 days. So, knowing that it would likely be the last week I ever drank, I had to get my fill. So I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at the same bar, drinking a double shift. Thursday's shift apparently went a little longer than I expected and I had my last blackout. And I got the crap kicked out of me.

I know I was at the bar around 10 PM. The next thing I remember however is staring at myself in my bathroom mirror at 2 AM, wondering why I have two black eyes, a golf ball sized bump on my forehead and bloody gashes all over my face. Seriously, no idea. A four hour period that does not exist in my mind.

The next morning (day before the intervention), I got up and found 5 beers in the fridge. Now that just raised even more questions. Did something happen at the deli? Did I get beaten up AND THEN walk into a deli just to get a six-pack? Well, whatever, I downed the five beers and called my sister to warn everyone what I would look like when I arrived the next day.

That night, I made sure to pick up a bottle of my favorite wine to drink - call it closure, but I wanted my last drink to be memorable, not a random Sam Adams from the fridge.

I think I'll save the intervention story for the next post, this feels like a lot to write all at once.

Best,
B